Caught in quicksand on beach creek

Four men were in considerable danger on the Ninety Mile Beach on the night of the storm, and two were actually caught in quicksand when a stream “blew out” below the Bluff as they were crossing it. They spent an uncomfortable night in the sandhills and did not get off the beach until Wednesday afternoon.

Messrs. Ben Berghan, Ken Stensness, Maurice Hanlon and D. Rakich had gone up the beach on Tuesday afternoon in the Star Mini-tour bus called the “yellow submarine” to spread metal on the access track to the Te Paki stream in readiness for Easter traffic.

At the narrows, a wall of water rolled down towards them and the bus was driven back hastily to the beach.

Creeks were by now flooded and a big sea was running, and as Mr. Stensness drove over one stream water sprayed over the engine and the bus stopped.

The motor could not be started, so they abandoned the bus and walked back towards the Mangonui Bluff where a tent has been pitched for some weeks.

As they passed the Te Arai Bluff the rain thickened, said Mr. Berghan, and while they were crossing a stream it suddenly broke out 30ft wide and waist deep. Quicksand developed in the swirling waters and Messrs. Stensness and Hanlon began to sink. They were dragged clear and the party returned with difficulty in the gale to the bus.

They dug “foxholes” in the lee of the dunes with shovels and huddled in them, wet through, their matches unusable. They had half a case of apples and four loaves of bread to eat until the morning when they got some mullet.

The gale raged and the sea raced up the beach as the tide rose, cutting into the sandhills. As it fell, they went into the bus for shelter, but they were driven out again before dawn and they went back to their bivouac, which they built up with bus seats.

At sunrise they stripped off their clothes and hung them out to dry, and they had just dressed and were about to set off across the sandhills to Te Kao at 10.45 a.m. when the company’s search and rescue party arrived from Kaitaia in another Star bus. Mr. Don Walters and Mr. Tom Hoddle had set off the previous night but they had been turned back by the violence of the storm, for the streaming rain on the windshield cut visibility to an extent that it was not possible to judge where to drive.

The “yellow submarine,” battered and half full of sand, was dug out and jacked free, but the motor could not be started so it was towed along the beach. It passed Hukatere at 4.15p.m., but the rising tide, kept up by the winds, soon threatened to catch both vehicles so it was run up in the sandhills three miles from the ramp and the party drove off the beach.

“Except for parts that can be salvaged it is pretty well a write off as a bus,” said Mr. Walters.

“However, we brought it away, as Star likes to leave the beach tidy,” he added wryly.

After the storm the beach was far from tidy. Mr. Berghan says that he has not seen it in such a condition, with a huge buildup of sand where the stream ‘blew out’ and brought many old logs down, and mounds of seaweed and other debris.

— April 16, 1968